Home / Israel arrests former terror leader, involved in ‘serious’ current activities

Israel arrests former terror leader, involved in ‘serious’ current activities

February 27, 2019 | Brainwave Science

SITUATION

Israeli security forces arrested Zakaria Zubeidi and Tarek Barghout on Wednesday. Zubeidi is a former Palestinian terrorist leader long sought by Israeli law enforcement, on suspicion that he was engaged in serious and current terrorist activities. Barghout who often represents terror suspects, was arrested on similar charges.

Shin Bet security service, Israel Defense Forces and Israel Police conducted a joint operation. The security service refused to elaborate on the nature of the suspicions against Zubeidi and Barghout. The two men were arrested in the Ramallah area of the central West Bank. Barghout’s car was also confiscated in Ramallah.

Zubeidi served as the commander of the Jenin region of Fatah’s military wing, the al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades during the Second Intifada. He was also suspected of being one of the chief architects of several terror attacks during the early 2000s.

Zubeidi, who also helped found Jenin’s Freedom Theatre in 2006, evaded capture by Israeli forces for years, before being offered amnesty by the Israeli government in 2007.

While he was wanted by Israel for his terrorist activities, Zubeidi began a relationship with an Israeli woman, Tali Fahima, in 2004. Fahima moved into Zubeidi’s Jenin home in order to act as a human shield and prevent Israel from conducting an airstrike to kill him. She was later arrested and convicted of assisting an enemy in wartime.

In December 2011, the Zubeidi’s amnesty was revoked without public explanation. He has been on Jerusalem’s wanted list ever since.

Initially, Zubeidi evaded capture by Israeli forces by remaining in Palestinian Authority custody in Ramallah. He was released by the PA and permitted to return to Jenin in 2017.

CHALLENGE

Israel’s security forces must be lauded for a successful joint operation which has led to the capture of a high-ranking former terrorist. What is important to note here is that once a man has been radicalized and becomes an extremist, it is very difficult for him to go back.

Because Zubeidi, is known as a ‘former’ Palestinian militant leader, it is surprising that he is being suspected of being engaged in serious and current terrorist activities. The agencies are interested in finding out his ties and what he is involved in at the moment.

After he renounced militancy in 2007, he committed himself to cultural resistance through theatre. It is very important for the Israeli Security Forces to investigate this case thoroughly and gain as much intelligence as possible because of his high-profile.

Zubeidi is a dangerous and a hardened criminal with militant training, thus existing investigative tools such as a polygraph or interview by law enforcement agencies in order to know the truth would be ineffective in this case and will not provide accurate results. Also, due to widespread support and his efforts to maintain a clean image, it will be extremely difficult to gather physical evidence against him.

A completely new approach to intelligence gathering is needed here. An approach which can directly detect the presence of specific information in the brain of Zubeidi and Barghout. If investigators are able to detect an awareness of intimate details of terror events, organizations, prominent terrorists and personalities, then linkages can be drawn, terrorist hierarchies and command structure can be understood. To do this via torture is not effective or humane. Zubeidi will not willingly disclose crucial details, and sometimes certain knowledge cannot be verbally expressed. Modern scientific methods like a ‘litmus test’ must be introduced in this investigation which can quickly help the security forces to ‘read’ the mind of the arrested suspects and gain meaningful insights which can help bring down dangerous criminal networks and terrorist organizations.

WHY iCOGNATIVE?

In order to detect the presence of specific knowledge like awareness of terrorist organizations, plots, links to known terrorists, planning and execution of terror incidents, in the minds of suspects, a Boston based company named Brainwave Sciencehas introduced a cutting edge tool which can help to identify if a person has the remotest connection to a terrorist organization, any terrorism training, has been radicalized, possesses bomb-making training, etc. It can even detect a person who is a member of a sleeper cell and inactive for decades. What’s more, it can detect terrorists among asylum seekers, and thus make the job of border control officers easier. This extraordinary technology called iCognative

iCognative tests do not have any known counter-measures. Moreover, there are no false positives and no false negatives in the results. The result of the test is not dependent on the subjective opinion It only depends on what the brain responses of the test subjects say.

When specific information like images, pictures, words or phrases are shown to a test subject, then their brain responses are picked up by specialized headsets which they wear. If they are familiar with the information which they see, then their brain will react in a certain way. Otherwise, it will react differently. The headset transmits the measured information to the computer running iCognative software. Here, once the test, which usually lasts 45 minutes, is concluded, the results are displayed immediately in the form of either ‘information present’ or ‘information absent’. The information shown to a suspect in a iCognative is called stimuli.

If a suspect has been involved in planning and/or execution of a terror incident, been part of a terrorist organization, been exposed to extremist ideologies and propaganda, then such details are imprinted in his or her mind.

In this case, the investigating agencies can save cost, time and effort by quickly running a iCognative test to screen and to detect if Zubeidi, Fahima, and Barghout have any current terrorist connections or not. For this purpose, the stimuli could be details from web history, email intercepts, phone records of communication with known terrorist organizations. Also, the names, pictures, and headquarters, of current terrorist groups can be used as stimuli. Details of known plots from intelligence inputs can also be used as stimuli, etc.

A iCognative test is highly accurate(99.9%) in its results. iCognative gives the investigative agencies the confidence to help exonerate the innocent and to help get the guilty punished.

Investigative agencies have all the reasons to celebrate since the iCognative test is highly applicable, in fact, it can be applied to 85-90% of all civil and criminal cases. The Shin Bet, IDF and Israeli Police will be delighted to learn that iCognative is portable, easy to deploy, easy to teach, easy to learn, highly customizable, both in terms of language and functionality.

The Israeli authorities must use iCognative throughout the country to non-invasively gather intelligence and optimize enforcement of law and fighting terrorism.